photo credit: the_vampire_hanna
Today I’m off to boxing class, and then to the Connecticut wedding of my dear friend C. and her lovely about-to-be husband S.
Punching plus nuptials. How apropro.
photo credit: The Ardvaark
This week started out right as rain. I was clean as a whistle, sober as a Baptist. I worked out for three days straight, challenging myself with such grueling physical punishments as abs class, kickboxing, circuit training, and not drinking for 4 consecutive days.
I felt self-righteous, diligent, well-meaning … and it’s amazing how much easier it is to get up in the morning when your face isn’t smushed up against an empty wine bottle.
photo credit: Curious Expeditions
We wake and count the empty bottles. There are 6, plus a box of wine that is near empty and said to contain as many as 4-plus, originally. Oof. Never let it be said that we can’t hold our liquor. We hold it and we drink it, too.
It took us a couple hours to get here yesterday from Boston, and the rains were incessant the whole way. When we arrived at the house (an adorable cottage right on the water) we found the doors locked and no sight of a key (except for a random, ancient one that my dad discovered in the garden), even though instructions had indicated we would find the doors open and the key on the table.
I’m forgoing brunch with friends in favor of staying home, seeing what’s on TV, and trying to get rid of my scratchy throat/aches/feelings of grave discontentment. I go into an office tomorrow to start a new temporary project, which is hunky-dory and “part-time” to allow for things like blogging and relationship-building and whatnot, but ugh! To be sick on the first day? Not fun.
Friday night I also stayed home (don’t worry, YUD hasn’t become permanently boring, it’s just this cold) and watched The Lavender Hill Mob, a movie that I’d initially borrowed from my good pals at Netflix on 6/16/09. I am not kidding; I just looked it up.
Given my 33 years and my penchant for what Oprah might call “binge drinking,” it’s odd that I only recently—this year, in fact—discovered Alka-Seltzer.
It was in Arizona, just before my layoff, at a lovely place run by lovely people, the Intercontinental Montelucia, that this great moment occurred. I was on a press trip—my first and only, as when I returned to New York City and my office I would be fired, post-haste.
On Friday, C. asked me if this was my new favorite word. Apparently, at least on that day, I was saying it as much as she said “L.B.,” which is most definitely her favorite, if not word, pairing of initials.
Yes, C., it is. Followed closely by “passel,” “crankinsence,” and “gruner veltliner.” And after that, “lobster roll.”
In honor of another successful Happy America Day, plus the fact that Your Unemployed Daughter managed to get a seat and avoid a fist-fight aboard the Montauk-Penn cattle car o’ doom – not to mention that her freelance office is closed and she is “working from home” tomorrow – she gifts you with this: Purty sunset pics. Gratis!
what price, sunset?
Good, right?
But I wonder. Everyone gets soooo excited about sunsets: where to go for the best view, waiting for an hour with rapt attention for 5 minutes of bliss, pondering the potential of “a good one” from the afternoon on … And then delivering passionate rankings from 1-10 when the pinkish/reddish/orangish hue finally appears and that fiery thing descends in the sky.
photo credit: Dark Botxy
We unemployed people are in a precarious position. On one hand, we’re free as the bees’ knees; without jobs to go to the next morning, we can party and dance on bars and drink and stay out late, sleep til 2 the next day, no problem, no worries. And some of us do.
We also desperately crave attention and conversations and people interactions, particularly if we are, say, former managing editors. And we do not get those things when we are home alone working on freelance item #7 or blogging all day. It is a vicious circle. Some might say we have become needy exhibitionists. That is the worst sort.
photo credit: Ed and Lex
An interesting side effect to being jobless: I suddenly have the endurance of a twentysomething (and if the bouncers at the bars I visited last night are to be trusted at all, I look like one, too).
Seriously, remember when YUD would sip herself into a coma splitting a bottle of vino with you? She was always so quick to finish her drink, and get another, and then another, but all of a sudden her eyes would get all hooded and cloudy and she was putting her head down on the table or losing her purse in heavy traffic. She was fun at first, but then you had to put her in a cab and send her on her way.
NYC: No time for subpar dining
Last night, I had pretty much the worst dinner out ever (foodwise, not company-wise or conversation-wise, S).
New restaurant, West Village, Italian … how hard can it be?
